Mária Gerzsány

Mária Gerzsány (March 25, 1851 – December 30, 1928) was a serial killer in Austria-Hungary responsible for poisoning at least three people with arsenic in Kistelek between 1905 and 1911. She was sentenced to life imprisonment for these murders, but it is presumed that she may have been responsible for more, selling her poisons to people who wished to get rid of unwanted relatives.

Activities Mária Gerzsány was born to a Catholic peasant family in Kiskunmajsa in 1851. In an era without social security, she worked as a midwife, helping local women give birth. A few days later, Gerzsány came across Palinkás again, offering to give her a stronger poison for an additional six korona, to which the latter agreed.

Gerzsány spent the next seven years in prison in a cell with another infamous contemporary criminal, Verona Fekete, and was released following Hungary's defeat at the hands of the Soviet Union during World War I. She then returned home to Kistelek, where it was rumored that she renewed her business of selling arsenic, and she'd even been commissioned by a woman who wanted to poison her husband. These allegations eventually reached the police, who were afraid of letting such a dangerous criminal run loose, and on March 19, 1920, Gerzsány was rearrested and transported to the prison in Márianosztra to finish her life sentence, where she died due to old age.